Anything You Say Can Be Used Against You
Selections from the Archive
One of my favorite pieces in our September issue is Erin McReynolds’s essay “And These Too Are Defensive Wounds,” which details the author’s interactions with the courts following her mother’s murder. McReynolds not only testifies in the original trial, but is requested to do so each time the murderer is up for parole—a difficult revisiting of a traumatic experience. It reminded me that, over the years, many pieces in The Sun have described interactions with our flawed criminal-justice system and the dramas that take place inside and outside of the courtroom. Below are some of my favorites.
Take care and read well,
Derek Askey, Associate Editor
© Jason Langer
My Day in Court
April 1994In this essay, Sun founder and editor emeritus Sy Safransky takes something as mundane and bureaucratic as jury duty and turns it into a thoughtful reflection on civic responsibility, politics, racism, and our—as individuals and as a nation—imperfect sense of justice.
Gregory Bright at the Innocence Project New Orleans in February 2011.
© Times-Picayune/Landov
Twenty-Seven and a Half Years
June 2015Incarcerated people’s stories have long been essential to The Sun, and this one, cowritten by Gregory Bright and Lara Naughton, has stuck with me since I first read it. Bright spent nearly thirty years in prison before being exonerated for a murder he didn’t commit. I admire the plainspoken way he describes his arrest, trial, and conviction, but I especially love how he endeavors to see his long years in a Louisiana prison as a means of transformation.
© Cyndi Prince
You Always Call on a Sunday
March 2010Jackie Shannon Hollis’s essay, written in the second-person point-of-view, describes the moments after her sexual assault, when “you were a crime scene.” It’s a challenging account of a difficult time, shot through with the author’s sharp sense of description and her admirable candor.
Edward, age seventeen, 1999: Edward has been in the system since he was twelve. He’s been arrested for numerous offenses, from possession of beer at school to auto theft. Now he’s been sentenced to twelve years in San Quentin for raping a minor. Edward is currently in San Jose Juvenile Hall’s maximum-security B-8 Unit for violent and high-risk youths.
© Joseph Rodríguez
Juvenile
May 2004Joseph Rodríguez’s photos have been gracing our pages since 2004, beginning with this striking collection of photos of incarcerated youths in California’s juvenile-justice system.
© Maureen Beitler
Crimes and Misdemeanors
April 2000In the Readers Write on “Crimes and Misdemeanors” we meet delinquents, trespassers, shoplifters, scofflaws, and liars. You know—the kind of people with the best stories.
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